29 September 2013

A Middle Way in Morality

1 Timothy 6:11-16

We read today from the first letter to Timothy, chapter 6, verses 11-16:

11But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 16It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. 

In this sermon series on finding a way between extremes in our faith, I’ve been preaching from the Pastoral Epistles: Timothy and Titus. These are letters in the New Testament that are not directed to churches as a whole but rather to individual church leaders – hence “pastoral” letters. And, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, these letters were later than most, written after the church was more established. They deal with practical questions like, “What is our place in culture?” and “What do we stand for publicly?” Last week we talked about theology, but as I said then, our theology’s only part of our story. Yes, the church has its distinctive doctrine – that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who died and rose again to reconcile us to God – but what was distinctive about Christians? One basic answer comes in v. 11 of our reading: As for you, man of God, pursue righteousness. Writer after writer in the New Testament says the same thing: Christians should be notable for their ethical standards and moral behavior. 

That should be no surprise to us. Don’t we all feel that Christians should live up to a high moral standard? When we read about a person who’s embezzled money, had an affair, taken a bribe, or dumped toxic waste in the river, and then discover he’s a pillar of his church, that makes it worse, doesn’t it? We expect Christians to be moral, and we expect the church to teach that. In fact, this may be one of the few things that the church and our society agree on: a recent sociological study showed that for most Americans, the primary purpose of the church is to teach morality. There’s actually more to us than that, but the point remains: the church is supposed to stand for the rules of morality. 

And that is how many, both in and out of the church, see morality: rules. We are the people who primly keep a bunch of moral rules and look disapprovingly at those who don’t. I don’t smoke, I don’t chew, I don’t go with girls that do. Remember that one? Or here’s one my grandmother taught me: Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine. But if morality is about rules, that leads to a problem: which ones? And here’s another way that American Protestantism is divided. Conservative Christians tend to focus on individual moral rules, especially those that have some connection to sex: abortion, homosexuality, pornography, sex trafficking, and “living in sin.” (And, by the way, why is it that we all understand “living in sin” to refer to sexual sin, and never to greed or gluttony or something. We all live in sin in one way or another.) But anyway, that’s the conservative set of rules. We mainline liberals, on the other hand, are all about “systemic sin,” that is, sins built into institutions and laws that harm groups of people: racism, environmental destruction, gun violence, oppression of the poor and immigrants, and so on. So evangelicals tend to stress individual sinfulness and ignore societal sin, while liberals stress society’s sins and ignore individual immorality. This feels unfortunate to me, on both sides. We’re like a pair of horses in harness, each wearing half a set of blinders. No wonder we keep bumping into each other. But both sides have this in common: we focus on morality as rules. Each side may have its own preferred set of rules, but both sides are quick to judge anyone who falls foul of their bespoke rules. So let’s explore the logical consequences:

Thesis: Christians should be moral

Thesis: Morality means following the rules

Ergo: Christians follow the rules.

Now, there’s a corollary to this proof:

Thesis: Being a Christian means following moral rules 

Thesis: Christians are to encourage other people to become Christians

Ergo: It’s our Christian duty to correct other people’s moral behavior. 

One final corollary, this one used mostly outside the church:

Thesis: Christians correct other people’s moral behavior

Ergo: Christians are jerks.

Logic is logic. Whether we’re frowning at people for wearing indecent clothes and using naughty words or for perpetuating racial microaggressions in the workplace and not recycling, we Christians are known far and wide for being prigs. At last: something that conservative and liberal Christians have in common. We’re both irritating. 

Some Christians, though, trying to avoid that stigma, have tried to get away from rules entirely.  They don’t want to be jerks or prigs, so they go to the other extreme and don’t talk about morality at all. Instead, they tend to talk about “tolerance.” Tolerance, you know, is the anti-legalism. Tolerance is live and let live. Whatever floats your boat, you know? It’s all okay. I have to admit, I don’t find this very compelling either. A life dedicated to tolerance feels to me sort of a sniveling, lukewarm way to live. If everything’s okay, that means that nothing’s bad, which implies that nothing’s especially good either. 

So here we are again, between the crazies, between two unattractive extremes. When we look at morality in the church, we see a choice between rigid legalism (of one variety or another) or tepid tolerance. We see harsh, judgmental moral rules on one hand, and on the other hand we see, Whatever. But there is a better way, and it’s found all through the New Testament. Look again at verse 11 from our text: Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Notice something? These are not moral rules. These are character traits. Now this does not mean to toss out all the moral rules – learning rules is usually the first step in developing attributes – but the goal is not to keep the rules. The goal is to become a person of love, patience, gentleness, faith, and integrity. As our text says, we are to be like Christ Jesus, who “made the good confession.” This is what people are supposed to see when they look at us. And here’s the kicker: the more you become like Christ, the less the rules matter, because you’ll keep them without noticing it. In Galatians, Paul passionately tells the churches of Asia Minor that they are not under the law. They don’t have to follow the Jewish rules – moral or otherwise. Instead, he says they should live lives characterized by the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Again, none of these things are rules. They’re character traits. In Romans 13:8, Paul makes it even simpler, “If you love each other, you have already kept the rules.” Somewhere between the legalism of most of Christianity and the laissez-faire See-No-Evil tolerance of the rest is this middle way: Love each other and act accordingly.

Some final practical conclusions. First for parents and teachers. Instruct our children in the moral rules. Children need rules. But more importantly, model for them the character of Christ. Model for them a life of love, forgiveness, gentleness, compassion, honesty, and courage, so that eventually they too can put legalism behind them and become people of character. 

Second, for everyone. This is hard. This Christ-like character business does not come naturally to any of us. Not yet. It’s way too easy to slip into selfishness and anger and laziness and greed, so it is our constant task to monitor our own lives and behavior, our progress toward the character of Christ. But it is not our task to monitor everyone else’s behavior. Can we influence others by our example? I hope so. Can we judge? No. 

Third, even as we decline to judge others’ weaknesses, we should always look for people’s strengths. Look for those who treat others as Jesus did, with respect and compassion. Look for people who keep their word even when it is inconvenient for them to do so. Look for people who take responsibility for their own jobs and for their own failures. Because none of this is natural to any of us, we need all the role models we can get. So does our society. We need people like that in positions of responsibility. If you should happen to find a political candidate like that, vote for that person. I will admit that I have not always done this. I have in the past voted for people that I knew were of weaker character than their opponents just because they happened to share my political opinions. Looking back … it wasn’t worth it. I won’t do it again.

Fourth, and finally. We may be non-judgmental, but that doesn’t mean we are supposed to be tolerant. No, we are supposed to be loving, which is not the same thing and is much harder. Jesus never told us to tolerate each other; he told us to love each other. Tolerance – like legalism itself – is a passive refuge for lazy people. Tolerance never expects us to step out of our way for anyone else; tolerance never calls for sacrifice; tolerance never demands anything at all. Love does.

But if we can learn to love well, the rules become insignificant. Morality itself becomes less important. And that’s the better way. For years the Church has pictured God as a heavenly bean-counter, weighing our moral lapses in a scale. And the Church has spent way too much of its apparently excessive time arguing about which sin-beans were the heaviest. I tell you today, that’s not what God’s like and not what we should be like.

Thesis: God is love.

Ergo: Go ye therefore and be likewise.